#cdiary

Season 2 Episode 6: Prosecution and apologetics

After a while abroad, Nilly comes home. Her parents often try to call her for all sorts of trivial things, but rarely inform her about letters. This is dire, because important letters often have a strict deadline.

This time, she receives a letter from the prosecutor. Suffering from a pathological inability to mentally time-travel, she does not weight the situation properly on an emotional level, although she feels betrayed by her parents.

Rationally, she can understand that she is in danger. However, until the very moment of the appointment, she is unable to process the peril she is in, and the potential threat of yet another incarceration ahead.

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Scientific note:

A failure to plan ahead is one of the diagnostic criteria for ASPD. Psychopaths, people with a severe form of ASPD, are notorious for an inability for mental time travel; the ability to put your emotions into a past or future state of mind.

Psychopaths can imagine past and future rationally. They can logically state what has happened and what will happen under sepcific circumstances. However, they usually fail to do so emotionally. As a result, a psychopath may understand that they should not perform certain actions, because they may end up in prison, but cannot process the implications emotionally. Such knowledge becomes a purely semantic knowledge without any mental value. Consequently, their ability to consider the consequences of their actions and planning out their navigations through life work only poorly.

They might be able to focus on a short-term goal, which bring quick immediate rewards, but they fail to integrate their actions into the social context of a realistic future plan. As such, it seems that a lot of their actions eventually turn against their own interest, sabotaging themselves or self-defeat.

Because of their inability to mental time travel, it seems that psychopaths do not understand their actions to the fullest. Because of that reason, some scientists and moral philosophers have argued that the actions of psychopaths do not carry the same severity, when compared to healthy control groups.

This is not to say that psychopaths are proposed to bear no moral or legal responsibility at all. Psychopaths do understand what an action is right or wrong, they can still choose to commit an action. However, it seems they can understand only the immediate action, not the context, consequence, or implications of said action. Due to their impaired understanding – including the consequences for themselves and others – it has been proposed that their punishment should be adjusted to their mental capacities.

Further readings:

Vierra, Andrew. (2016). Psychopathy, Mental Time Travel, and Legal Responsibility. Neuroethics. 9.

Season 2 Episode 8: Demon Hunting

Nilly (age 19) decides with her friend Rob (age 18) to explore a graveyard at night. She hopes to find some demons she learned about from her cultural folklore to get famous.

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Scientific note: Sadly, I could not find anything substantial about Conduct Disorder / ASPD and religiousity. So, all I can do is to piece together fragments from available information.

One thing in this episode is surely characteristical for people with conduct disorder. Children with conduct disorder are notorious for exploring an abandoned basement, dark woods, or a graveyard at night.

At her age, even though graveyards may estill voke a feeling of unease, visiting such places are a common test of courage. The concept of monsters and demons also appears to be interpreted differently. Within a religious context God is supposed to inspire awe, admiration, and a sense of moral goodness. The Devil is meant to evoke a sense of moral repulsion, demons are supposed to scare people. All these concepts appeal to the emotional interactions between a social group. It teaches a social group what is good, what is evil, what is permissable, and what is appalling.

Nilly, however, is utterly oblivious to the emotional load of the religious terminology. A demon is not a morally depraved being or a creature to fear. Instead, she treatens the demons of her culture like rare animals, which can be explored, understood, and captured, if they turn out to be real. The graveyard itself, perhaps still a morbid place to be for many, does not even register as a place filled with heavy emotions, but is merely a potential habitat of something she perceives as yet another animal.

Sources:

Season 2 Episode 4: Bully the bullies

Nilly, also known as Anti-Soc.-Girl, on her way to school in a winter morning. Depressed and tired, she enjoys the empty school corridors after arriving far too late, which has become a habit at the age of 15-17.

Teachers began to ignore her tardiness, as she would not improve anyways. And since she appears to school eventually, teachers see little reason to cause her anymore trouble than necessary.

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Scientific note:

Kids and teens with conduct disorder are notorious for bullying behavior. Yet, bullying is by far not limited to them. Bullying is usually done by in-group peers to presure out-group individuals and it is quite possible that kids and teens with conduct disorder end up in the receiving end.

How could someone with conduct disorder react to being bullied? This episode is about Nilly reacting when bullies force her to play "Keep away" Even if the odd kids with conduct disorder might become subject to bullying, they often put an end to this by themselves. This in turn may cause more trouble. As social animals, humans naturally value peace in the community.

The escalation of the situation or fueling oil to the fire to end a situation for the individual's favor might be perceived as undue, over the top, or concerning for both people in authority as well as peers.

Truancy is considered a core symptoms of conduct disorder. Although Nilly displays some willingness to go to school eventually, her tardiness is sometimes considered part of the characteristical symptom for a lack of responsibility, defiance or breaking of rules. Further readings:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8521530/#Sec13

Season 2 Episode 9: Making New Friends

After her friend Rob moved away, Anti-Social-Girl Nilly (age 15-17) befriended another guy. They shared some interests and overall he appeared to be strong and confident. Smart move to get someone like him on your side is it not?

Well, turns out it is not best for your school performance and when confronted with bad grades, she realizes that at some point in your school career, it is not about power on the school yard, but about the prospect of academic success.

Conduct Disorder is associated with impeded school performance and the social environment may play into this. Luckily, the up-coming discussion of her grades remind her that her future plans and actual future may diverge if she does not chance something. She also gets kinda annoyed by her friend. So, it is time for new friends, which fit her newly gained ambitions!

She looks around and spots a student who looks more to her liking. A bit of a loner, but above average grade and generally kind. The perfect new friend. Now, the question remains: how to get rid of your old friend, get the teacher to give you a better grade, and get to your newly targeted friend?

Easy! Throw your old friend under the bus, so you get off lightly. Blame him for your poor performance, teachers loooove self-reflection and social awareness, as well as being right about their judgement about another student. Who cares about your old friends, especially if they are not listening, right?

Next, you tell your teacher that in order to help you, you need to sit next to the targeted friend. That they barely know you, does not matter, they will make your acquaintance soon! And once you are placed next to them, you act as if it was all the teacher's plan. Neither old nor new friend knows you ever had anything to do with it!

And then, you work with your new friend together to become a good student and check out their notes, homework, and other stuff to copy.

As such, we see how Nilly drops an old friend in exchange for a new one. Ironically, unbeknown to her, she will actually develop some sort of emotional bonding with them, or better an imbalanced desire to be actually liked and admired. This is how she came to meet the "pink haired student" with glasses we saw already in earlier episodes.

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Author's note:

I could not find an explicit scientific source about it, but the idea that people with Conduct Disorder and ASPD, especially if combined with CU traits, are willing to throw their own friends under the bus, if they can save their own, is pretty much common knowledge. It does not always have to be dramatic. It can also be subtle.

I found this surprising when I once watched an interview with a psychopathic gang member, who admitted that he would switch the sides on a gang, if the other side has something better to offer. Because when I checked the comments, a lot of people who felt like they would be psychopathic due to a lack of emotional consideration for others, they felt repulsed by the idea to betray the close circle. To me, it appears that the lack of empathy for the common people is reserved for out-groups, while empathy and loyalty is considered as given, if there is the safety of an inner circle.

The fact that a psychopath may throw this all away seems to be... perplexing to say the least. Also that you may befriend people you may not even like, seems to be unusual. I would not say I am like this today, because at some point, I wanted stable relationships and I had to work hard to get to that point. Also I think that most of my social circle right now is in their social aspect themselves beneficial to me in a way I could not have imagined when I was younger. So thanks to these people for that!

Further reading:

Vitaro F, Tremblay RE, Bukowski WM. Friends, friendships and conduct disorders. In: Hill J, Maughan B, eds. Conduct Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence.

Keen DV. Conduct disorders and us: from heart sink to heart warming? Arch Dis Child. 2007 Oct;92(10):838-41.

Miron CD, Satlof-Bedrick E, Waller R. Longitudinal association between callous-unemotional traits and friendship quality among adjudicated adolescents. J Adolesc. 2020 Jun;81:19-26

Season 2 Episode 5: Different degrees of Insanity

In this slice of life episode, Nilly (now 17-19 years old) meets her friend Rob. Everything goes fine and it seems like a pretty normal day until a weird guy shows up at the door.

Rob is probably not an ordinary person either, but he handles a potential threat much more energetic than our anti-social teenage girl. After the incident, she does her best to comfort him, which then leads to discussing their relationship status.

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Scientific Side note:

Psychopathic people with ASPD are said to be able to remain calm in situations others find stressful. There are various theories to why that is. Some suggest this is due to low physiological arousal, others because of an attention deficit in threat detection, yet others, assert it is because of high pain tolerance.

This allows them to find effective long-term solutions even when confronted with a threat or danger. Another theory states that a high dopamine boost, people with ASPD would often experience, would let them focus on the goal - such as avoiding harm or protecting something - rather than engaging with the potential threat, often resolving the conflict more smoothly.

Season 2 Episode 7: Fakes and forgeries

Nilly, our little anti-social-girl, around age of 16-19 by now, gets an order from her father: She is instructed to make some forgeries of important documents. Turning her time on the computer into something useful.

Once she accompanies her father to deliver the document, she quickly finds out, she will be the one to be blamed if anything goes wrong. Now she has to make sure everything goes smoothly at the office.

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Scientific Sidenote:

This episode is less about our ASPD-girl Nilly, but about another person manifesting anti-social personality disorder: her father.

While this blog aims at the humanization of pwASPD, showig the conditions, under which a lot of pwASPD may have grown up, is also a great chance to explore untreated and unaware psychopathy.

The emotional deficiency is considered moderately heritable. This means that a disposition for psychopathic emotional affect is more likely to appear when your parents already displayed psychopathic behavior. At the same time, it is not a sufficient condition and warm parenting can counter the disposition.

People who show a psychopathic affective manifestion of ASPD also display pro-social emotional deficits, such as lack of remorse, care for the safety of others, and manipulation. This can result in an instrumental usage of family members. Combined with impulsivity, as it is typical for pwASPD/psychopathy, the children may need to compensate for the parent's mistakes.

As a result a child of psychopathic parents may learn early on that their value as a person depends on utility and efficiency, rather than an inherent value as a person. This then leads to a devaluation of interpersonal emotions on their part.

This is not to say that bad parenting is predetermined. In the end, it is the individual who can learn to work around their symptoms and to live with their disorder or not. If unreflected and untreated, it is less likely that the relationship will be anything but toxic though.

Further readings:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X211013517

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34152500/